Quarantine Diary Day 8: A Third of the Way There
Breakfast today was quite a surprise. There was decent quantity of things, and not all dry breaded things.
There were two smaller buns, with kind of a dried pork or 肉松 type of interior. Still a lot of bread to filling ratio.
Then there was their usual vegetable bao, which I prefer to their meat one (the one with the flat meatball disk inside).
Today there was a surprise, with two shaomai 烧卖! These were the Shanghaiese type, savory with bits of pork in the sticky rice filling.
Inside the purple rice congee 紫米粥, I added in the hard-boiled egg and the zhacai 榨菜.
My shirts were dry overnight thanks to the very dry air, but my other clothes were still damp. What to do with the clotheslines when the morning temperature check person comes around?
I just detached the side that was looped over a clothes hangar, and draped them alongside the pole next to the TV to reduce their profile. That was good enough!
Lunch was pretty good. There was my favorite orange (post-quarantine, I went to the fruit shop and bought this type of orange in the individual wrapper, because I liked them so much).
There was shrimp again! But these were the boiled kind, and so were nice and moist.
Those aren’t shrimp eyes on the rice (I thought they were at first - you have to admit they look like them if you reference the picture above). They’re actually peppercorns, so I guess the water that the shrimp were boiled in was seasoned with them.
I was very happy with these simple, big slabs of tofu 豆腐果 with pork. We hadn’t had this kind of tofu all week.
The vegetables - baby bok choy with black fungus 木耳 - wasn’t soupy for once.
The only let down was the duck, which was very dry and tough. But at least it was a break from the usual stir-fried and soupy things from this kitchen.
I then had my customary coffee with mint cream.
Dinner came with a bottle of Coke. I left all of these Cokes behind at the end.
Tonight, the chef combined two favorite ingredients: that corn (with peas and diced carrots) and shrimp! And tasted exactly as if he added frozen shrimp into his corn/pea/carrot dish. Unfortunately, the shrimp had a kind of soft texture, not the springy bite that I prefer.
The vegetables were, as usual, also very soft in texture. I think this picture shows just how they’re really turning brownish with the overcooking.
The bamboo shoots (with some shredded pork I think) had a yuxiang 鱼香 flavor. I really enjoyed this - it was spicy and crunchy! A great textural contrast with the sadly soft vegetables and shrimp.
The pork I think was roasted and sliced, and coated with some sauce. Like the duck at lunch, it was dry and tough. Still, I think the chef overall was trying a little harder with the meals today, with more variation in preparation.
This was a third of my way through the 21-day quarantine, and halfway through the first 14-day “red code” hotel. By now, I’d gotten into my routine. I had my desk for work, which I cleared off for meal times. I had one suitcase open on the floor with my clothes for accessibility, my ledge with my snacks and water and resistance bands.
I had my kind of wobbly chair for working, and I’d push it in when I wanted to do some exercise for more floorspace. For exercise, I used these resistance bands I brought from the US (only about $10 from Nordstrom Rack), and I also did some stepping exercises. I particularly liked the HASfit channel on YouTube for resistance band training, and the Get Fit with Rick channel for steps.
